The 48-year-old Tunisian prisoner, Adel Bin Ahmed Bin Ibrahim
Hkiml, has been held at the notorious detention facility for more
than 11 years, and kept in solitary confinement since March. His
lawyer Cori Crider spoke with the Huffington Post regarding Hkiml’s
suicide attempt after being informed via a letter dated March 19
that was just cleared for publication.

The inmate who wrote the letter informing Hkiml’s lawyer of his
suicide attempt, explaining that he was unaware of his current
whereabouts after he had been taken away by ambulance, and did not
know whether he had survived at all.

"I haven't seen [Hikmil] in a while. I haven't been able to talk
to him," Crider told HuffPost. "But he had a really hard
time back in Kandahar back in the days, and I think was never
really the same."

Human rights organizations have reported hundreds of suicide
attempts, at least seven of which were successful. Last September,
a Yemeni detainee took his life after spending more than a decade
at Guantanamo where he reportedly went on hunger strike a number of
times. Adnan Latif had been cleared for transfer by both the Bush
and Obama administrations, but was never released.

Crider told AP she had been notified by the Department of Justice
last week that Samir Naji al Hasan Mukbel, who is also her client,
was being force-fed. His fellow detainees said the man suffered a
minor heart attack while being force-fed on March 19.
"Some people have gone through this a lot but he said he had never
felt anything like it in his life," Crider said after talking
to the detainee over the phone. Mukbel reportedly told his lawyer
that he joined the hunger strike back in February, lost over 10
kilograms in weight, and had to be taken to hospital after he
fainted.

US officials have only recently begun naming those Guantanamo
prisoners who are being force-fed to stop them from starving to
death.

According to lawyers, over 100 prisoners are taking part in the
life-threatening hunger strike. The Center for Constitutional
Rights claims that 130 detainees are involved in the mass protest
over their treatment and conditions at the prison, while officials
put the number at 42.

The collective hunger strike was initially triggered by the prison
staff’s seizure of inmates' personal belongings, such as
photographs and mail, as well as the allegedly sacrilegious
handling of their Korans during searches of their cells, the
inmates said.

This later grew into a mass protest against indefinite imprisonment
for those who have long been cleared of all charges. Half of
Guantanamo detainees have received papers from the US government
clearing them to be transferred out of the prison, but are still
being held at the camp, which Amnesty International has called an
“American gulag.”

On April 5, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay described
Washington’s failure to close Guantanamo and release indefinitely
held detainees as a “clear breach of international
law,” adding that the ongoing hunger strike is a
“desperate” but “scarcely surprising” act.

The detention camp in eastern Cuba reportedly currently holds 166
men seized in counterterrorism operations, most of who have been
held without charge for a decade. Although Barack Obama promised to
shut down the facility at the beginning of his first term as
president, the facility remains open.

Earlier this week, RT was placed in a queue for media visits to the
prison.

"Currently, we are not scheduling media visits because we have
military commissions from April 15-26. Your request has been noted
and you are in the queue for a media visit as first available. Your
organization is ninth on the list of requests," Guantanamo
Media Relations Officer Malisa Hamper replied in a letter to
RT.

Street protests are planned on Thursday across the US in support of
the Guantanamo inmates, and to push for the notorious facility to
be shut down.